


Selected citations from 'The Legend of Agatha Heterodyne' by Professora Wilhelmina Klovitz (Helix Press, Mechanicsburg, 2000)

by gisho



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Academia, Alternate Universe - Historical, Gen, Metafiction, rhymes with 'macademia' because they are both nuts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-15 02:13:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13021080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gisho/pseuds/gisho
Summary: "Born over four centuries ago and with a life shrouded in mystery, Agatha Heterodyne has caught the imagination of modern writers and videurs in a way no other Old Heterodyne could manage. Klovitz deftly examines how the 'thriller' approach of present-day historical fiction has given short shrift to a remarkable historical figure." (TPU Literary Review, June 2000)(Alternate universe where Agatha was born centuries ago, amoung the Old Heterodynes.)





	Selected citations from 'The Legend of Agatha Heterodyne' by Professora Wilhelmina Klovitz (Helix Press, Mechanicsburg, 2000)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Para](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Para/gifts).



> Also for Para for spark_exchange. Did I mention I really liked your prompts?

\--

###### From 'Heterodyne Ladies: The Forgotten Women of Mechanicsburg's Dark History, from Eris to Euphrosynia' by Dr. Mercuria Tiffen (Polygnostic Popular Press, Beetleburg, 1984)

... the next woman born to the Heterodyne family - discounting the persistent rumours surrounding Iago - was Agatha Heterodyne, daughter of Robur. History has struggled to speak of her, in the face of scant and conflicting documentation; the rumours that swirl around her work range from the plausible to the absurd. She was known for her clankwork, and for her investigations into the nature of time - a field that would lie fallow for three centuries afterward. 

Agatha was born to Robur Heterodyne and Angelica Mongfish at some point before 1565, probably around 1560. soon after their marriage. A surviving letter from the then-bishop of Bálan implies she was born in 1574, but this would put her aeolocognitive breakthrough in 1579, a date known from the memorial plaque in the Court of Gears, at the absurd age of five. 

Agatha's breakthrough was probably set off by the early death of her younger brother, Lazarus Heterodyne. He was killed at age four by an unknown assailant, possibly one of Robur's concubines acting out of jealousy; we again know this from the memorial plaque, which speaks of 'the one who made [her victims'] sacrifice necessary, whose bones are burnt and whose soul will be cast to the foulest pit for her crime'. [1] The melted footprints of her Magma Engine survive on a paving slab preserved today in the Heterodyne Museum, a grim reminder of the destructive power even one of the quieter, more thoughtful Heterodynes.

[1] Translation mine; the original plaque is in Mechanicsburg dialect, probably the only reason it survived Mechanicsburg's transformation to a tourist town.

After her breakthrough, Agatha more or less vanishes from the historical record for ten years. Mechanicsburg records have always been spotty. The various Lords Heterodyne were more concerned with pillage and plunder than lasting fame, although they certainly achieved fame as a group. Those early Heterodynes who are not remembered in terrified letters to various Popes or in the stories told to instil obedience in children across Transylvania [2] are often known only by the dates in the family crypt, and Agatha was not buried in the family crypt ... Most documents from before the time of the first Storm King were destroyed in the events of 1677 [4]. We know of Agatha's later research mostly from Corbettite records kept at the St. Valdemar Abbey. 

[2] For example, the 'Rotting King and Skeleton Queen' who are appeased with parades around the Iron Gate region almost certainly began as Dagon Heterodyne and his partner, the Skull-Queen of Skraal. See Burdock et al ('Transylvanian Tunes' p 164).

[4] I would love to offer details. So would every Heterodyne historian. The surviving witnesses refuse to talk.

But, however she arrived, Agatha turned up in Aalsborg in 1590, accompanied by five Jägers, seven minions, and a woman who introduced herself as "Princess Vreleth of the Unseen Empire". The Masters of Aalborg had yet to declare themselves Philosopher-Kings, and the master of the time, Johann Swelm, apparently saw an opportunity to enhance his prestige by association; he formally gave her the freedom of the town and university, over strenuous objections[5]. Agatha began by descending on the library, which was at the time home to the largest collection of natural philosophy works in the Germanies. She told no one what she was searching for, or why. 

[5] A letter signed by thirteen professors demanding he 'repel the invasion', dated May 12, 1590, can be found in the Aalsborg civic archives. Agatha's thirteen companions more resemble an honour guard than an invasion, but exaggerated fear of Jägers was the rule across eastern Europa until the reign of Klaus Barry.

In light of her later work, it becomes obvious that Agatha was looking for information on interdimensional harmonics. Following the path of her researches is probably beyond any student of history except those who are aeolocognitive themselves. However, an examination of Aalborg's historical inventory from 1582 reveals texts she might have consulted ... Tragically, Meton's 'On the Nature of the Fundamental Structure' is now a lost work. It was never printed, being too obscure to attract the eye of early printers, and all three extant copies having vanished by 1630: the Buda in the fire which destroyed most of St. Zwei's Abbey, the Aalborg to the Great Frumenty Flood of 1594, and the Venetian presumably to theft, as it was simply marked 'Missing' in the 1630 catalogue. We can only hope some uncatalogued collection in a forgotten castle holds a fourth manuscript, or that the descendants of the Venetian thief decide to pay back their ancestor's debt.

During this time, Agatha placed orders with a local bell foundry for bronze components, including a set of seven cogwheels almost a meter across [12], and with jewellers for enough cut-glass pieces that their regular customers complained of delays. If she meant them for the construction of a clank, it never materialized. However, her neighbours complained of "strange floating Lights, blue or pink in Colour, which arise from her Garden at all Hours of the Night; it is not possible to sleep in Peace without hearing the Voices of Devils" [13].

[12] I only know this because she rejected the first set for some error in the fabrication, and the foundry (Goldstein's, on Third North Street) incorporated the rejects into the opening mechanism of their decorative doors, which are still in use. Let no close-minded worm say wandering aimlessly around town can never give one meaningful results.

[13] Aalborg municipal archives again, pleading to the city guards from R.P. Fliesenleger, 02 November 1590. Translation mine.

By the end of the year Swelm had fallen prey to the usual idiocy that afflicts powerful men, and demanded Agatha's hand in marriage. The track record of previous attempts to make political marriages with Heterodyne daughters should have given him pause, but perhaps he thought Agatha was too good-natured to have her husband skinned and made into a cape. In a sense, he was right: Agatha had no need to. After hearing that he had announced the marriage at a private party before obtaining Agatha's acceptance, Princess Vreleth challenged Swelm to a duel. 

The duel was set for January 1, 1591, the same day as Aalborg's traditional ceremonial election, in which male citizens 'affirmed their trust' in the present Master by dropping white stones in a carved wooden 'ark'. It was obvious the duel would upstage the election. The day was clear and cold; at an hour before noon, they met in the public square. The young scholar Albert Rerich described the scene in a letter to his mother[14]:

> The challenger was broad-built, pale as milk, and she wore a leather doublet but no sleeves at all. She carried a sword as long as my arm outstretched, engraved with runes in a language I knew not. Some of us had come to mock Lord Johann for duelling a woman, but seeing her kitted for battle the thought came to me that few men would have dared ... For the second time they fell on each other, too swiftly for my poor eyes to follow. There was a terrible noise of steel on steel, and pounding of feet, and when I could make them out clearly they stood straining together, the hilts of their swords almost touching. Then the Princess leapt away. Lord Johan followed and I thought he had the victory. I heard him shouting, Yield!, and his challenger answer in a wail of some barbarian tongue. What happened next I cannot tell, for all that my eyes were fixed on it. The lord's mighty sword was stuck in the Ark of the City like an axe left in a chopping block, and he himself was fallen to the flagstones, right side all bloody. The Princess was so bold and cruel she put her boot on his throat to declare herself the victor.

[14] Quoted in Erich's 'Economic History of the Smatterburg Duchies', v. 6 p. 348. Translation courtesy Dr. S. Mallarding. 

The unconscious Swelm was carried away, and the election delayed. He died of his wounds four days later. Agatha and her retinue had sensibly fled the first night ....

\--

###### From an unpublished draft of 'Agatha Heterodyne and the Monsters from Beyond Time' by Horia Petrescu (Hazardous Histories Books, Paris, 1987)

"We call them _Dreen._ " Vrel's voice was dark, breath warm against Agatha's cheek. "The ancient enemies of my people. For uncounted years we've sought out their gates into our world and driven them back. So many of our bravest have sacrificed their lives. I never thought they would show their tentacles on the surface world - Will you help us?"

Agatha's pulse sped up at the touch. How could she refuse to face such an enticing opponent? She had seen the strange creatures destroy solid rock with a touch, make Doctor Swelm's Armourmen explode into fragments as easily as they themselves melted into a miasma. The first trick would be to simply _keep them still_. It would take a good trick - but she was a Thinkomancer. 

And it was Vrel asking. She would refuse nothing to Vrel. 

"Tell me everything you know of these Dreen," she demanded, an aeolean crackle in her voice as she reached for her stylus. 

Vrel's strong hands were closing instinctively on the leather-wrapped hilts of Agatha's daggers - the only weapons left to them after their narrow, disastrous escape from St. Zwei's. There would be new weapons, Agatha would build some as soon as they were in a town again instead of hiding in a snow-wreathed trapper's cabin, but for now she'd given her friend the best they had. "We don't know where they came from. Some malevolent god must have made them to taunt us. Our barbaric ancestors worshipped them as gods, and - and sacrificed kidnapped Surface-worlders to them. But since my great ancestor Wosereth brought us the Truth, we've fought them back with fire and collapsed their gateways. Only powerful, rare metals can keep them from returning - the sacred earth that you Surface-worlders know as _magnets_."

"You mean -" Agatha almost gasped in delight. "You mean all we have to do is magnetize everywhere they might turn up? It can't possibly be that simple!" Magnets, she could do. The ideas were already taking shape in her head, sparking like the tang in the air before a thunderstorm. Give her something to sketch on, and in an hour or two she'd get the thunderbolt of inspiration. Agatha snatched a half-burned stick from the fireplace. "We can generate magnets on the fly with a directed lightning generator - in theory. If we can get the parts. Here, I saw something like this in Beetleburg." She began to scrape the design in soot across the broad hearth, mind racing.

\--

###### Review of 'Agatha Heterodyne and the Monsters from Beyond Time' (TPU Literary Review, Beetleburg, June 1987)

A dramatic, purple-prose adventure story in the tradition of last century's penny sparklies, "Agatha Heterodyne and the Monsters from Beyond Time" still has flashes of brilliance. As the tale both of how a first-class genius pits her technical skills against an implacable enemy, and how a woman raised to be a despot discovers the value of friendship, 'Monsters' will be good vacation reading for teens and for adult hardcore adventure fans. It shows the internal life of an aeolocognitive woman with more sympathy and accuracy than the average thriller, portraying her need to take control of an uncertain world as neither something to be scared or something to pity, but as a natural facet of her personality. The same sadly can't be said for its historical accuracy. Petrescu claims to base the story on Mercuria Tiffen's pop history 'Heterodyne Ladies', but manages to include anachronisms such as particolored doublets and municipal gas lines. We can forgive it, since it's more about plot than setting. 7/10.

 

\--

###### From 'Heterodyne Ladies: The Forgotten Women of Mechanicsburg's Dark History, from Eris to Euphrosynia' by Dr. Mercuria Tiffen (Polygnostic Popular Press, Beetleburg, 1984)

... The directed lightning generators Agatha installed were still fully operational in 1673, when they provided a decisive advantage for the defenders in the Siege of the Sicilians. But several exploded in the process, inflicting dozens of friendly-fire casualties on the Venetian side, and the Doge Anatolio knew that time and rust had taken their toll. He replaced the damaged generators with flamethrowers designed by Lorenzo of Ravenna, despite their shorter range and the difficulty of keeping them fuelled ... By 1865, only three of the original generators were still operational [28]. These three were given a complete refitting by Bill and Barry Heterodyne, who also added aluminium plating to prevent a recurrence of the rust issues. The generators were last used to destroy an enemy ship in 1938. Today they are fired once a year as part of the Sposalizio del Mare, and sometimes for other civic celebrations.

[28] Guidini p 135-140, but any military history of Venice will tell you all about it in unnecessary detail.

Debt paid, Agatha was allowed to remain in Venice until the midsummer festival with the condition that her Jäger guard remain outside the walls. Agatha found this condition unacceptable, but unlike most Heterodynes, she was familiar with subtlety. She entered the city peaceably and spent three days discussing philosophy with scholars at the Academy of Venice before, on the third night, making a raid on the Doge's Museum of Wonders in a flying machine she had apparently spent the last two nights building. Immediately on landing she welded shut the famous eight-metal museum doors from the inside. As a distraction, she set off fireworks in several neighbourhoods. By the time guards managed to break though the Museum doors, Agatha was aloft again. 

An inventory conducted after the raid revealed a very strange selection of thefts ...

 

\--

###### From 'Agatha Heterodyne and the Electric Wheel' by Horia Petrescu (Hazardous Histories Books, Paris, 1988)

The thing rose wobbling into the air. Facing it, Agatha felt a strange swell of pride. It wasn't the finest flying machine she might have built, but it would do its job, swiftly and splendidly, and most importantly no-one in the city except her own minions and Vrel knew that the thing existed.

They were going to do this. They were going to make off in secret with the Doge's greatest treasure, instead of burning down pieces of the city until he handed it over as tribute. 

She waved her arms down, and an instant later, it dropped like a rock.

Only Vrel grabbing at her waist kept her from rushing forward to rip open the pilot's hatch. Her crowbar was already in her hands. But it sprung open without her intervention, almost before the clouds of dust thrown up by its vast feathered wings had reached the edges of the courtyard, and a familiar dirty head emerged. "Sorry, Mistress," Shadrach called out. "Little problem with the differential gear."

\--

###### From 'The Secret Book of Castle Heterodyne' by Frances Delarosa (Artemis Press, Monaco, 1988)

"My father would have you hung up by your ankles," the golden-haired lady told them. "You're just lucky you're too short to set off any traps."

Louis raised a trembling hand. "Please, mistress ..."

"Yes?"

"IstheCastlereallyhaunted?" he blurted out in a rush. 

"Haunted?" She chuckled. "Goodness no! We just like to frighten people off, so Father puts the doors on springs, and makes little automatic horns that laugh and moan - they're very clever. And the traps, of course," she added. "One time a minion wound the spring too tight and an adventurer got flung right out the window and landed on the Cathedral spire. Father laughed for hours."

Right, Lara thought with a sinking heart, the Heterodynes were awful people, even if this one seemed friendly enough. They should have stayed far away.

The golden-haired lady said, "Come with me. I'll hide you in my lab."

\--

###### Personal communication, Tudor Petrescu to Horia Petrescu (8 January 1989)

Horia - 

Have you seen Delarosa's latest? I can't believe someone had the nerve to elbow in on your thing. Of all the historical figures who've lived in Mechanicsburg they had to pick Agatha Heterodyne? Sure, they'll go on about 'inspiring stories of the past' and 'good role models for girls' but what happens if the girls get ahold of Tiffen's book and get inspired to start using their boyfriends for raw material? Not Agatha, obviously, she never got married, but some of the stories about Vipsania just don't bear thinking about. And let's not start on Euphrosynia.

But at least it proves you're making a splash. Which brings me to my actual point: Want to make a bigger one? I'm thinking we have an opportunity here. I'm thinking 'movie'.

Big, explosive, lots of special effects. Anything about Sparks needs lots of special effects. We could have lots of fun with the Gate to the Other World - glowing, maybe negative images? Well, that can get worked out in production. Anyway, there's plenty of scope for a madcap, rollicking adventure story, something people will say they're watching for the kids. 

I know Panait's been itching to get her claws on a splash sparkly. It won't take much to talk her into producing. Maybe get Mircea Stancu to counterbid? Or, ooh, coproduction, I bet the two of them together could talk Anca Felea into signing on as Agatha. Don't you think she'd blow it away? The woman is wasted on period dramas, I tell you, I want to make her an action star. This could be her breakout hit.

We might have to ramp the action up, though. No offense to your novels, they're great for novels, but there's not one scene in them with Agatha emerging from a fiery ruin, dress in shreds, hair still smouldering, and tossing off a witty one-liner. What's the point of having Anca if we don't have her in the smouldering ruins of a ballgown, right? Of course I'm right. I'm always right. And then she blows away the villain’s henchman with her new flamethrower.

We'll have to get His Nibs Nicolae on board, but he's all caught up the 'Heterodynes should not be dictators' thing. Hell, he didn't do anything to those morons at Truth And Light but melt down their press, and that was _in Mechanicsburg_. I bet if we spin it right he'll let us film on location.

Anyway, we can work out the details later. You could even script it. Call me, I'll call Panait, let's get the ball rolling, I see a New Year's 1990 release? Gives us time to hype it. See if you can get your publishers to put out Book 4 in the fall, get people interested. And hurry up and write Book 4!

All the best, Tudor

P.S. Mum says Yule was lovely and she wants us back for Lupercalia, and you're to bring those clove cookies again. Don't worry, I'll distract Gerit with brandy.

\--

###### From "The Myth of Agatha the Good Heterodyne" by Dr. Mercuria Tiffen (Polygnostic Phantasmagoria Monthly, April 1989)

... In psychological literature, this tendency to divide people instantly into 'heroes' and 'villains' has a name: splitting. It is a symptom of assorted unsavoury mental problems. Alas, it seems to be endemic in popular culture.

If Agatha did less damage than her predecessors, it was as much for lack of chances as for disinclination. Comparing her favourably to the Red Heterodyne, who spent three years attempting a bloody conquest of the Unseen Empire and thirteen taking out his failure on Pannonia, is no more sensible than comparing her unfavourably to Lazarus, who died before his fifth birthday. We know she was very close to her father, and that for ten years after her disappearance, Robur conducted no raids and demanded no tribute. There is no evidence, as at least one overblown student essay proposed, that he did so in deference to her wishes. Grief and fear seem to be sufficient explanation.

Her breakthrough project had a body count of seventeen. Her raid on the Venetian Museum of Wonders left three museum watchmen dead of poison and shot down twenty city guards who tried to capture her escaping flying machine. She obviously had no qualms about killing in pursuit of whatever she wanted.

We know that when King Bogdan of Galatia tried to take her prisoner, she retaliated by demolishing his palace, killing not only Bogdan and more than two hundred soldiers but over two-thirds of his household staff. Overnight, Galatia went from an independent polity to a morsel for its ambitious neighbours. 

We know that the lightning generators she built for the Golden Doge sank nineteen ships in the first year they were operational.

None of this erases her genius, or her contributions to kairology. Most of it, from an charitable perspective, vanishes against the chaos of the era. But it demonstrates that Agatha was no pacifist and certainly no saint. Even a Heterodyne without ambitions of conquest could leave a wake of destruction in the pursuit of pure science. It may be unfair to expect anyone to develop ethics without a teacher or a good example, but to impute them to someone when the best history can say is that they had other things than cruelty on their mind, is stupefying naiveté at best and at worst, an insult to their victims.

Why am I taking the time to write this? 

Because I heard someone say to me, in all apparent seriousness, that they hoped their daughter grew up to be like Agatha Heterodyne. Because I saw her name on a list of 'role models for young scientists'. Because people are so desperate to find historical figures to look up to, and hack writers so eager to feed them cheap heroics for a few marks, that we risk people forgetting how brutish and cruel the past was to most if its inhabitants. 

This is my sacred duty as a historian: to remind you that if you want _good_ Heterodynes, start with Bill and Barry ...

 

\--

###### From "Agatha Heterodyne: ahead of her time, or warped by things humans should not know?" by Dr. Saule Mors (Journal of Improbable Physics, November 1989)

Boldly marching from 'physics' to 'wild speculation', Robur's street plan is too fascinating to ignore. Rough calculations (see appendix) give p=.008 for a pattern topologically equivalent in the plane to the actual Mechanicsburg street plan, given a fixed number of edges. The specific shape of obvious landmarks like Teodora Road is harder to quantify, but also harder to imagine was the result of chance.

At this point in the essay it's traditional to pause and thank your favourite brewer or chemist. I must abstain, having developed these ideas under the influence of only a late night, Balanese coffee, and a rereading of 'Agatha Heterodyne and the Monsters from Beyond Time'.

From the time of Agatha Heterodyne's original experiments to the time the Mechanicsburg street plan matched Robur's sketch, approximately three hundred twenty years passed. We insert this value, expressed in seconds, into Gauthier's resonance equation ...

\--

###### From 'Heterodyne Ladies: The Forgotten Women of Mechanicsburg's Dark History, from Eris to Euphrosynia' by Dr. Mercuria Tiffen (Polygnostic Popular Press, Beetleburg, 1984)

... Since the device was eventually handed over to the Corbettites, we can consult their records for the beginnings of an understanding of its function [65]. Alas, a beginning is all we can get. Agatha's flights of fancy were extreme even by aeolocognitive standards, and such of her notes as have survived are nigh-incomprehensible; the Corbettites have not allowed researchers to access the device itself.

[65] See 'Inventory and Examination of the Beddgelert Crypts, Including Descriptions, Histories, and Cautions for the Artefacts Contained Therein, Considerations of their Modification for Peaceful Purposes, and Sundry Remarks on the Defences of the Crypts' by Father Llywellen Price, whose keen scientific eye almost makes up for his inability to end a sentence. Privately printed in 1977. I'll spare you a direct quote, but he says Agatha's device is three meters tall and two wide, consisting of a cylindrical copper base a meter tall and an arrangement of multicoloured glass 'bottles' supported by ceramic and copper armatures, arranged in the approximate shape of a sphere. There was a control panel on the base, but it's been ripped off, leaving bare wires. Even now the device smells faintly of ozone, and in darkness it occasionally sparks and crackles. Disconnecting the electric piles above the base didn't stop the sparks; they havn't been wired in since 1934. Father Price apparently couldn't think of a peaceful use for it.

We do know, from the slightly more comprehensible notes kept by Robur Heterodyne and subsequently handed over to the Corbettites, that Agatha worked on the device with his occasional collaboration for two months. At least once they emerged from what had seemed to be two days and a night of work without rest only to discover it was still midmorning of the same say. The phenomenon of 'timeless fugue', as it is known in modern metacognitive literature, is difficult to study, and debate still rages as to whether it represents an actual effect on the flow of time or is purely mental. [66] It seems poetically fitting that it took hold so firmly on two people attempting to investigate the nature of time itself.

[66] Dr. Saule Mors made a frontal attack by asking a number of aeolocognitives to wear wristwatches and note the elapsed time, only to find that the watches stopped completely. See "Timeless fugue: an evasive phenomenon", Journal of Improbable Physics, August 1980.

The original version of Agatha's device included a "glass crown", as Robur described it, which has not survived. His notes describe a series of eerie effects: "The world stopped, and then turned red around me ... Wailing! Light in places that were not there. The noise is too much. They [unspecified antecedent] say I should not have gone there. Agatha said she asked them questions but they answered in riddles. I am seasick, I will never not be seasick again. I need pie." His sketches are equally curious, showing a figure apparently wearing a metal mask, a giant clockwork wheel, stacked silhouettes of what looks like a woman performing a fencing move, shaded-in shapes resembling the 'Dreen' constructs who formed a small but compelling part of Baron Wulfenbach's military in the late nineteenth century, and a line drawing with an eerie resemblance to the street layout of Mechanicsburg in 1910, after Klaus Barry Heterodyne's first expansions. Whatever Robur saw, it terrified him. 

Agatha left no notes of her own experiments with the device. However, I was given the privilege, in March of 1982, of interviewing a witness. Jägergeneral Øsk is one of a handful of beings still alive who remembers Agatha personally, although as he was firm in reminding me, his memories are fuzzy with age ...

... where her unpublished calculations were eventually, by fortuitous coincidence, found by one of the few people in Europa capable of understanding and building on them: Professor Dio Zardilev. Coincidence was required because the Immortal Library, not recognizing the value of their already improvable acquisition, shelved it with the Pure Mathematics collection. Zardilev, delighted to find that some of his abstruse speculations had already been demonstrated by experiment centuries before, edited the manuscript and had it published as an appendix to his 1890 monograph, "On The Nature of Chronometrical Distortion". 

It is beyond the scope of a history book, to explain, or the mind of most historians to understand, _why_ Agatha's work was so important. There's an anecdote passed around in university departments [74] that Jeanne Gauthier was once told by a student, "Everyone tell me you're one of five people in the world who truly understand antekairic currents." Gauthier told them, "I wouldn't say that." The student said, "You shouldn't be modest about it," and Gauthier answered, "No, I mean that there can't be more than three." We can only accept the word of Zardilev, Gauthier, and of Asimov that she gave kairology a vital stepping stone.

[74] If it's ever made its way to a more definitive source than a net node, I've never seen it.

We can only speculate, likewise, how far she might have advanced science with a full lifetime to work. It was less than six months after she finished her device that a terrified Robur brought it to the Corbettites, in whose crypts it has rested unused for almost four centuries. 

Perhaps out of grief, Robur kept to his own town for more than ten years afterwards. His grief might have been blunted by the birth soon afterwards of his two sons, Marijan and Miltiades. As they grew to manhood, the family reverted to type. They went down in history as the Black and Red Heterodynes, and ushered in seventy more years of bloody Heterodyne conquest.

Europa would not breathe easy again until the days of the Storm King, Andronicus Valois - and that peace would be brought to a sudden end when the next "Heterodyne girl", like Agatha, vanished in strange circumstances. Unlike Agatha, though, history has plenty to say about Euphrosynia.

\--

###### From "Things Forgotten" by "Absinthe46" (Europanet posting at site 'The Zine Engine' [paris.uni.azote.brochmoteur:5072329], 3 July 1989)

She did remember this much: Vreleth's hands, closed on her shoulders with the same easy certainty she held a sword. Pale wisps of hair escaping from the knot behind her head, wide eyes looking right into Agatha's own. There must have been words exchanged, but they had vanished. 

None of that was important now. 

Agatha closed her hands on the orb again and tried to _think_. The faint static twinges rattled through her hands, just sharp enough to hurt. She began to hum, letting the familiar vibrations block out everything, the world go soft and quiet and the voices of inspiration that were so easy to drown out whisper into her ears. 

Nothing else. She wants to see those happy memories again, if only to be sure that they existed. It would be too easy to assume her careless twirl of the handle had wiped the whole adventure away into the realm of make-believe, but that's not what the maths say. Nothing just goes away; the energy wouldn't add up. She has to find the point of divergence. 

It shouldn't matter to her. It wouldn't be the first time she's killed someone for standing in her way.

\--

###### Personal communication, Prof. Mercuria Tiffen to Tudor Petrescu (12 April 1989)

Herr Petrescu - your idea is absurd, ahistorical, and more full of holes than a target dummy. I'm only signing on to this project in the hopes the percentage of gross revenue you surely meant to promise me as a consulting fee will let me install better shock frames on my office windows. Some people can be so unreasonable about tenure. 

Consider the rest of this letter a free sample, and before you start quoting it, consider the excellent TPU legal department to whose services I, as a tenured professor, am entitled.

To begin with, if Agatha's going to reappear to help Klaus Barry, remember that he had plenty of help already. I grant that he was one of the least aeolic of the family, but with Gilgamesh Wulfenbach working for him he didn't have to provide his own spark. (Point of order: at the time 'madboy' was the rude term, 'Spark' the polite one, 'technic' a purely British one, and 'aeolocognitive' didn't exist.) People know this, and if you just drop other historical figures from the story people will wonder where they went. 

Not that she would be able to help right away. She'd have to adjust to technological advancement. You could at least nod in the direction of technological advancement. Make her amazed at how many things Sparks can build now they can get the parts. 1590 didn't have electric streetlights, or steam trains, or lava forges. Steam trains especially - when Agatha was born the Corbettites were an order of smiths and sculptors, and the world's longest railway was a three-kilometre horse-drawn minecart line in Kipchakia. Your brother didn't always give the impression of checking these sorts of things, but a movie should be able to pay people to check.

Do not, do NOT, add a romantic subplot. If you say you want strong heroines and then turn Princess Vreleth into a man, the critics will laugh. Between their sobs of despair. 'I loved you so much I took the Jägerbrau to wait for you!' is an idea that would appeal only to morons, given the casualty rate. Let 'Vrel' be a beloved girlfriend in flashbacks, if you must. Or if you absolutely must get her in to appeal to the kiddies, bring her through with Agatha. (And while you're at it - for all the sparklies that hook up Gilgamesh Wulfenbach with some girl-of-the-week, in real life he was either Europa's most discreet lover, or married to his work and completely faithful. I fully expect you to ignore this, but it has to be said.) Just, for the love of little green cogwheels, don't waste time on Agatha fretting about romance. Remember the "Sebastian's Hammer" movie? Neither does anyone.

Speaking of which, I can't help you with Vreleth much because that one account of the duel is pretty much all we have. Put her in a fur bikini if you must, no one can prove you wrong, but please remember if you do that you need an actress with visible muscles?

Thank you for deferring to an expert as far as personality. The expectations of behaviour for well-brought-up women were very different in the 16th century, but Heterodynes will be Heterodynes. I don't know if you read my book, so I'll repeat it: Heterodyne women were not brought up to b ladies, and were not used as marriage chips. Excepting Euphrosynia, they married below their station - two forced marriages on common prisoners-of-war. They all rode to war with their brothers or fathers. Either Vipsania had a twin who vanished, or she was christened Vanamonde and raised as a boy for eight years. She might not have been the only one. What I'm saying is - forget 'ladylike'. Different times, different expectations, but the important difference for Agatha is that she was raised to regard the whole world as insects to crush beneath her heel. You want absolute pride, automatic authority. Deference to Klaus Barry Heterodyne, maybe, but nobody else in Europa. She wasn't raised that way. She was raised an Old Heterodyne.

Which means the culture shock might be as intense as the technological shock. Her collateral descendant worrying over whether he has the right to rule? Trying not to hurt the civilian subjects of his enemies? How is he supposed to win the Long War like that? Agatha is not torn between helping fight and pure defensive inventions during the Siege of 1889. If Agatha is torn between anything and building weapons you're doing it wrong.

Or to put it succinctly: shards and ash do you people need a consultant. Lucky for you, I like a challenge!. Call me, let's talk marks.

\- Professor Mercuria Tiffen

P.S. I don't know what Agatha would think about how the marriage treaty eventually played out, but I think she'd approve of Anevka Sturmvoraus. And if you try to move out Anevka to make room for Agatha, I will borrow Szoldby's ant-lions and set them loose in your sound studio. Keep that in mind. 

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###### Personal communication, Europanet user 'mech!uni!igneous!jjenka' to Dr. Saule Mors (22 December 1989)

Doctor Mors, If you wish to learn something you will find interesting, go to Vilnius central station and pick up a parcel. There are photocopies inside of a very old notebook.

A certain gentleman whom I shall not name found these notes in a secret lab, some time ago. He was short on time and time is not his thing. But I think Lady Agatha might have thought of some things other people never worked out, not even the infamous Madame Gauthier. I will admit your mathematics went right over my head, but the rest of your paper on Lady Agatha was sharp. Very sharp. If anyone can make head or tail, as they say, of her notebook it would be you. 

Just don't forget to list her as co-author! That is what you academic types do when someone helps with your work, yes? 

Good luck from a friend. 

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End file.
